My mother, the queen of clean, could compete with Martha Stewart herself in keeping a tidy home. I think she would agree that tidying up has a sort of magic all its own. In fact, I believe that one reason I always have a great time at her house is that it is neat and clean and negativity has been swept away with her various cleaning products. Although my mom is pretty extreme in her cleaning, I do think most of us could agree that clutter and mess can seem very overwhelming and increases stress and anxiety for many people. It is not uncommon in this modern world to live under the stressful burden of too many material things which becomes an unmanageable mess. Most of us could stand a bit of cleaning and purging! From a magical standpoint, cleaning has great benefit for the energy of the home and our own mental state.

In the book Magickal Self Defense, Kerr Cuhulain advises,

“Negative thought-forms accumulate in messy environments. An organized household fosters an organized mind. An organized mind is much more capable of defense than a disorganized mind. You do more than just emptying the garbage pail when you take out the trash.”

Do cluttered environments lower our defenses? I think they do. In fact, I think they weigh us down and cause needless anxiety. I have found that tidying the home releases these negative thought-forms and wards our home against negativity. If the benefits of being tidy are so great, then the only question should be how to achieve a neat, organized home that stays that way.

I have read many books on organizing everything from socks to tools but few really stand up to close scrutiny. Most home organizing books really rely on moving “stuff” from one place to another which isn’t really very tidy in the end. Along comes the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo which promises if you follow her method, you will never have to organize your home again. Kondo’s clients are in Tokyo primarily and have limited space to work with but the lessons are sound advice to the “stuff” loving culture of the West as well. Some of the best lessons from her book are as follows:

1. Ask yourself if your belongings “spark joy” in your life. If they don’t, you need to donate, gift, or trash them. I often wonder if this also goes for husbands (or wives)? If it doesn’t, I definitely think it should, but I digress…All the items in your home with some limitations, like tax returns, should bring joy to you. If you surround yourself with joy, your life changes.

2. Organize by category not room. Clothing is the first thing to organize in this book. All your clothing, in the entire house. Get done with the first category before going on to the second, which is books by the way.

3. Fold don’t hang when possible. Folding takes up less space anyway. Also, the correct way to put folded clothing in a drawer is vertically. Clothing stacked in drawers gets crushed an wrinkled and you can’t see all your clothing at once and have to resort to digging through your clothes.

4. Organizers are for hoarders. Complex organizing systems for closets, under beds, etc. are used to put away more stuff that you really don’t need anyway.

The magic of this book is that you become able to part with things that don’t make you happy and surround yourself with things you love. The book treats your clothing as entities which have feelings. This seems strange at first until you start looking at the state of your drawers. My clothes were dreadfully unhappy! The magic of tidying your home with a ruthless purging is bound to be life-changing. Which reminds me, I am barely on the category of books…

To understand the Golden Shadow we must first comprehend the Shadow itself. The Shadow is a Jungian term which describes that part of us that we vehemently deny. It is the unconscious aspects of our personality which often inadvertently come out of hiding periodically. These aspects, are perceived negative traits in our personality which over time become relegated to our unconscious. This is a sort of self preservation process, as humans do not normally want to identify with their more immoral, selfish and self destructive traits. Jung adhered to the idea that unless the shadow was brought into the conscious, it would appear in our lives anyway as “fate.” This fate would be controlled by these negative traits that seem to have power over our behavior and subsequent lives. Some people will show their shadow when they argue with others. The things we cannot stand about someone else may be some of our worst shadow traits.

The Golden Shadow

As it turns out, not all of the shadow is composed of undesirable traits. In fact, there are little gold nuggets of greatness hidden in there as well. These are your hidden talents, beauty, creative genius, and cleverness, basically your gold. These we also hide away from others. We may shine too bright or seem too outrageous if we let these gifts be known. Again, we may find traits from our Golden Shadow in others. You may admire someone for their beauty or confidence when it is really a projection of your Golden Shadow.

Why hide the Gold?

Now I can understand the reasoning behind hiding our dark shadow from ourselves and others. It is quite apparent why we hide our selfish thoughts, our immorality, and our dirty little secrets from consciousness. However, why would we hide our gold? Marianne Williamson sums up the reason nicely in her poem Our Deepest Fear:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It’s our light, not our darkness,

That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves

Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

So it’s the Golden Shadow that is most feared, but therein lies your power. For within this Golden Shadow the divine resides! What if all the things you wish for yourself were true already? You would be creative, wealthy, gorgeous, smart, powerful, talented, and desirable and would have nothing to yearn for or dislike about yourself. Wow! No drama or complaining! Now that is scary! We are secretly masochists, and seek to sabotage our greatness and stay in our world of dissatisfaction and lack. Our best bet is to recognize our Shadow and bring the darkness to our conscious mind and try to work through some of that muck. At the same time embrace our genius and imagine ourselves already possessing the amazing traits we are searching for in our lives. Chances are, we already possess those traits within ourselves.

I am happiest when I am far from the city with its crush of traffic, people and noise. I like hiking in Sedona on some hidden paths I know in the Secret Mountain Wilderness area, and my dream would be to live and work far away from urban life and its struggles. Unfortunately, I have a few years at the least until I can move from the big city. What is a witch to do?

I practice a sort of urban witchery as a resident of a large city. Here are a few of my favorite ways to practice witchcraft in an urban setting.

1. Clip important things to Evernote: Evernote is an app which allows you to clip articles, links, handwritten notes, voice, text and photo notes and syncs automatically across all of your devices. There are even some people who use it as their book of shadows or grimoire. You can also collaborate with others in a shared notebook or save articles to read later. I use the web clipper on my laptop which allows me to save things that I find by clicking a little button. I can look at these immediately on all my devices.

2. Use a tarot app: I use Galaxy Tarot on my phone. It is a great app with different spreads and a journal where you can save your readings. This is probably the best free tarot app out there. If divination with runes is more your thing there is also a Galaxy Runes app.

3. Make and carry and amulet, talisman or good luck charm: I carry a four leaf clover charm most days. It’s a smooth little piece that easily slips into a pocket and it nice to hold during the day. An amulet or talisman is also a great idea for an urban witch on the go.

4. Embroider protective or other sigils onto clothing: If you’re good with needle and thread, or even if you aren’t, stitching a sigil or symbol into your clothing can be a great source of magic.

5. Give regular offerings to the spirits of the land: This is probably the most regular ritual I do. I basically go out to my yard near my rose bushes and take a stick or cone of incense with me and offer it to the spirits of the land. When I first started this practice I was surprised how the incense filled the space of my side yard. It is beautiful. It also takes about 10 minutes, and if you light your incense in a rocky area it will burn out safely. This can be easily practiced in any outdoor space in your city and you can make it as simple or complex a ritual as you would like.

6. Find and use unique urban witch products: Here is some amazing urban witchery that I love. Professor Pam’s Urban Divination Deck is a gold on black oracle deck that uses common urban symbols and happenings to guide your readings. This is a wonderful deck for the urban witch. It has city oriented cards like “The Suspicious Puddle,” and “Free Newspaper.”

However entrenched you are in urban life, know that at some stage to recharge yourself you will have to get away into the natural world. Cities tend to weigh us down eventually, so make time to drive far away from the hustle and bustle and soak up some solitude.

I think everyone has a breaking point. Everyone. Some people can deal with many things going berserk before they get to the point of losing their shit. Most can’t. Unfortunately, the world has turned into a ridiculous mess in my opinion, and I have come to the conclusion that it is edging toward hopelessness with a dash of shear crazy. Apparently, my life is reflecting this on a whole new level lately. The owls who stalk me in my yard have hinted at it for ages. “When will you transform yourself and get out of this place,” they ask.

When did it come to this? I know exactly when. It started the day my brother died and

Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash

continued ever after. I’ve been locked in a pool of dread and heartache that has been compounded by the absolute bedlam that has been going on in the US lately. I am up to my eyeballs in a kind of hopeless muck, and I don’t foresee getting out of it any time soon. I have resigned myself to reveling in my current state and throwing hope to the wind. Yep, just giving up hope entirely.

If you don’t know we humans are screwed, you haven’t been paying attention. To save time, I won’t go into all the ways we are screwing ourselves on a daily basis. If you want, you can go google it after you read this. Sadly, we are in a sharp decline, almost like a free fall at this point. There is really not much more to say about it. Civilization at some point becomes fragile and transient. My best rally to this is to stop being hopeful about a better future, or a future at all for that matter. As a teacher I have found that we push this hope crap on children all day long. It is nauseating. We used to make students say this little hopeful, lovely every morning:

“I am a kid at hope. I am talented, smart, and capable of success…blah, blah, blah.”

Throw that crap out! Why? Because it continually looks to the future without being mindful of the present. It is a stupid idea that traps the mind into constantly planning for some future that is always that, “the future!” Instead, be mindful of the “now.” Do and think in the present. Go for a nature hike, cook a great meal, or learn to meditate. If you have a cause that you think is important, give your energy to it! Don’t just “hope” for a better future.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in dreams. I love dreams. Dreams are little alternate universes that give us insight into ourselves and our gifts. I think we definitely dream too small and need to rectify that. I use a planner called the Passion Planner. In it, there is a weekly schedule that has an area called “space of infinite possibility.” This is how our dreams should be, an infinite possibility! Please don’t give up your dreams. Write them down, draw them, hell get a Passion Planner and have a space of infinite possibility to record them!

Photo by Petra Rose

Finally, I like to look to the wild for the best way to live. The owls in my yard do not hope nor are they hopeless, for both of those ideas pertain to the future. Owls are unconcerned about the future but intentional about the present. As we should be if we are to truly live in this crazy world.

I usually get a couple of questions right off when people figure out I am vegetarian. “Why?” followed closely by “What do you eat?”

The answer to the latter question is simple. Everything else. The former has a little more complex answer. My reasons for never eating meat again have a lot to do with my deteriorating health before I switched, my love for the environment, and the idea that large herbivores who know pain and fear should be treated with some level of respect. I do know people who treat their animals well. My uncle, a cattle rancher in Nebraska, is one. I was there in June when he was worried about getting them out of the hot sun and into a pasture with trees and shade. He stays up all night with his cows during calving season which happens to be in the dead of winter in Nebraska and makes sure they have a nice bed of straw and heat when they are born. Sadly, most of our animals don’t have this level of care, and all of them come to the same miserable end. So I took myself out of this food chain, and I never looked back. Until I realized I couldn’t quite take myself totally out of the web of life and death because Mother Nature doesn’t at all resemble a vegetarian.

Mother Nature taught me this lesson in my garden. I grow amazing roses and herbs straight through the year due to our mild winter. I grow witchy herbs like rue and thyme, culinary herbs like oregano and basil. I have an uber green thumb like my farmer ancestors I guess. Everything was growing quite well for me until one day when I noticed some caterpillars eating my basil and crawling toward the thyme. I tried taking them off and putting them elsewhere, and by elsewhere I mean on the shrubs in our common area. They just came right back in a couple days. So, as a vegetarian, what do you do? You could try something to discourage them or you could spray some garden soap to kill them. If you don’t get rid of them, they will eventually kill your plants, however. These plants were important to me as they are also living things.

It dawned on me that Mother Nature doesn’t care about your ethical dilemmas. To save your living plants you will probably have to kill other living things much to your dismay. Mother Nature is not vegetarian, she will weave the web of life and create the green shoots of new growth and at the same time crumble the living to dust and rot. You can see it in a garden on a daily basis. The nest of a pigeon nestled in the roof today and the baby pigeon snatched by owls the next. Beautiful flowers and leaves one day, crumpled brown leaves and petals smashed in the mud and muck tomorrow. Nature is relentless, unforgiving and cruel. Mother nature devours, recycles, and regrows. She feeds off of life itself in merciless ways.

The best I could do is draw some sort of line that I would not cross and respect that line. Sometimes I found that I had to redraw the line. I used the soap on the caterpillars eating my basil and thyme. I crushed the bark scorpion with a shoe to protect my children and myself. I didn’t feel good about it. I carefully scooped up the wolf spider my cats were playing with and carried it to safety outside. Interestingly enough, I found that wolf spiders play dead to avoid extermination (smart little critters). I realized that to grow living things sometimes you have to destroy other living things in the process. That I had to draw a line disturbed me, but we are always drawing lines. Mother nature is a consuming entity not bothered by ethics or morals. She eventually destroys all that lives, and then miraculously out of death comes something new. This is the way of the earth and anyone who lives here, vegetarian or not. Clearly, I am not one to argue with Mother Nature.

To write something down gives it power. To write something down with intention and fold it into an object, decorate it with intricate patterns and designs and breathe life into it is a greater power indeed. Many times we are caught up with the fabulous tools of the craft…and why not? There are wonderful, magical items in our collections. Every now and then why not try a simple tool, like paper? You may find it isn’t so simple after all…

Try a rune or two intertwined. Decorate them and weave your own energy into your work. Put them someplace quaint. In a purse or compartment where they can work their magic.

A paper folding project may be nice. With small pockets to hide an herb or flower. A spell hiding inside waiting to come to fruition. Perfect for a pocket or hidden in a fold of cloth.

Why not create a small alter that could fit inside an envelope? Earth, air, fire, and water are there in tiny folded forms.

Turn a plain box into art by using colored pencils or other media to sketch sigils or runes. This could hold anything you can dream of.

How about an artist trading card with a spell concealed inside. Or maybe a devotional, invocation, or magical recipe hidden between two pretty papers and decorated with intent. Here is one for the ocean and one of my favorite marine mammals, the dolphin.

These are some simple ways that I have used paper in magic recently. Remember, putting energy into a project like this is only part of the real magic. Make sure you charge it with intent to manifest your dreams.

A major dilemma for me is the search for the perfect oracle or tarot deck. I actually have dreams about finding a truly amazing set of cards but of course I wake up to find that I am stuck with other people’s ideas and artwork. There are a few decks that meet my requirements pretty well. The Earthbound Oracle (found here) has wonderful pithy artwork and illuminating words. It is a small, poker sized deck, which I prefer over the larger cards that are harder to shuffle.

clockwise from top left: The Bonefire Tarot, The Victorian Fairy Tarot and the Everyday Witch Tarot

My go to tarot cards are the Victorian Fairy Tarot which has amazingly rich art which looks fluffy initially and pure enchantment the more you work with it, and the Bonefire Tarot, a vintage tattoo art deck inspired by the symbolism of the “bone” fire which is where our word bonfire comes from. Lastly, I really like the Everyday Witch Tarot with its quirky witches in striped stockings. But alas, if you want a deck to your specifications and vision you have to make it yourself.

You could always use crowdfunding to get your work started but you have to really promote yourself through social media to have a successful campaign. If that is your strength, go for it! However, if you want to make your own deck and have the option to sell it later printerstudio.com is a great option. You have the option of different sized cards including poker, bridge, square, and standard tarot dimensions. There are paper choices as well. I really like the linen, but there is also a smooth card stock and a plastic as well. You can also change the orientation of the cards into a landscape format.

In a perfect world you would have time to work on you own artwork, scan it and make your own amazing deck. I do much of my own artwork but I would really have to schedule time to complete the artwork for a 78 card tarot deck or even an oracle deck. It would be basically a part time job for a long while. At some point I would love to do it, but it is a future project. Your vision can still come through using drawing apps and other photo editors. One fun app is called Uface. You can create your own faces and

UFace Unique Face Maker

subsequently use them on your own cards. Another place to find nice artwork which is old enough not to be a copyright issue is Old Book Art. There is an amazing array of images to be found here if you have time to dig a little. They can be used for anything you want to use them for, but I am partial to using them for divination decks! I am in the middle of an Arthurian oracle deck using artwork from this site. There are also a plethora of free high resolution photos out there which are also equally useful.

Printerstudio has the great option of selling your work to others after you publish it. This is a great way to share different decks which are a little different than the norm. I really love looking at what other designers have done. It is motivating and inspiring. You can of course just keep your decks for your own personal use or give to others as gifts, it is totally up to you. Be mindful if you are selling your work that your vision may be different than your audience. Try to understand who may be purchasing your work and design accordingly. In any case, it is very rewarding to see your ideas played out in a deck of cards and also a great self discovery process as well. Happy creating!